Research in Motion (Rim) has insisted its BlackBerry is the most popular smartphone in Britain.
The company based its claim on stats from market watcher GfK which, it said, show that more BlackBerrys were bought in December 2010 than any other brand, giving it 36 per cent of the UK smartphone market and 14.9 per cent of the …

BB

Title

Depends on your function. If you need something a physical keyboard for just emailing, sure a Berry may be what you need. If you just need Facebook and touchable maps and Angy Birds, Berry's are not the best.

_widgetMap.length

Hell no.

If you want a crappy, buggy piece of shite, that can't browse, doesn't do flash 10, is slow, chews memory, has memory leaks, doens't like music on an sd card, can't sync without installing crappy nokia pc suite, can't do maps or voice navigation, chews battery, has very little market place apps, all apps cost twice that of the android or iOS equivalent, can't do MMS, can't do custom ringtones, needs 6 apps to gain basic functionality, isn't supported by the manufacturer, installed spyware on PR1.2 so Nokia gets all your details AND forgets the movie codec half way through playing the movie.

and

Totally agree!

RIM should transition to software only and provide the best email experience for business users, independent fo platform. Long term, that's where their future is oherwise competing sexier devices and MS Exchange will kill off the Berry.

BB vs iToy

RIM's main market has always been enterprise. That's why they don't do "as much" as your typical iSomething or Droidslab: The typical BB owner is more interested in spreadsheets, CRM integration, email and remote-wipe than flinging birds at pigs or making fart noises.

That said, I have to say the old Blackberry does seem rather popular on the morning bus journeys. Somewhat moreso than the iSomethings, even. Not sure about the Android-on-the-bus figures, as you can't really tell without having a good close-up gander at it or happening upon a familiar-looking home screen. I think most people would take offense at you peering over their shoulder while they tippety-tap their latest inanities into Twitter. I do get a fair few heads turning when they see this Froyo-flavoured seven inch thing being fondled in my lap though. And several questions along the lines of "is that an iPad?"

Hmmm

Sounds like a pretty dubious claim. I expect if we were looking at sales by "brand" that iPhone would stomp over Android and Blackberry. If we were looking at sales by OS that Android would stomp over iPhone and Blackberry. I can't think of any situation where Blackberry would stomp over iPhone or Android without redefining what the term "smart phone" meant to most people.

Try my country

BB outsells iToys by a landslide. In fact, it is more likely to find someone touting an LG or Samsung touchscreen feature phone than an iPhone. Part of it may be that an entry-level BB, the 8520, sells at the low price point of 3000 MXN (£154.16) vs the 10,000 MXN (£513.87) iPhone4.

I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case in other countries as well. Oh, and businesses seem to prefer BB for some reason...

It's a business phone. Bulk purchases by businesses are responsible for the "numbers".

Blackberry phones are pretty much all you see business buying for their staff, and in bulk, so yeah, you'll see more Blackberry handsets sold and out on the street, but I'd go so far as to say 90% are sporting them because that is what their manager handed them.

^ This

51% of PAYG sales sounds about right seeing my kids, and all of their friends seem to have acquired BB's over the past year, what I notice though is that while they're using BBM non stop, phone calls are rare, I haven't seen any of them using 'apps'.

As smartphones go, these could be a hell of a lot dumber and the teen audience wouldn't notice.

Teens

I concur. The biggest growing sector for the BB from my experience has to be the teen market. They're all going mad for BBM. This is no doubt because you can pick up a PAYG or sim-free BB for under a tonne now (which is much easier for a parent to justify forking out on the little'uns) and once a fad starts amongst the teenies, they do tend to herd together somewhat. Why would they yearn for a 'droid when all their friends are getting BBs? iPorns are well out of the equation too because of the crazy price tag.

BB 9700

Been there, done that. My BB 9000 got nicked, so I took the chance to upgrade to the BB 9700. Most of the ugliest issues with the Bold were solved, and yes including the ones making you pull the battery every now and then. Mostly the problem seemed to lie with the measly 128Mb of shared memory, which was increased to 256Mb. The entry-level 8520's are also equipped with these specs, so they are kinda stable as well.

I'm amazed

I'm amazed it is so popular on PAYG, for business with a BES I can understand it, but without that you can't even do IMAP 2 way sync to your mail accounts and folders. And this is supposed to be the best email device there is. Don't make me laugh.